IKEA Racks Up 250,000 Solar Panels

By the end of last year, IKEA had installed more than 250,000 solar panels on company stores and buildings globally and invested in 126 wind turbines in six countries.

According to IKEA’s latest Sustainability Report, it produced renewable energy equivalent to a third of its total electricity consumption in 2012. By the end of 2015, IKEA says it will have invested AUD $1.93 billion (at current exchange rates) in renewables. The company has an ultimate goal of being 100% renewable energy powered.

IKEA acquired two operational wind farms in Poland last year with a total capacity of 28 megawatts and has committed to buy another 26MW wind farm that will be operational this year. A 90MW wind farm under construction in Sweden will generate electricity equivalent to all the power the company uses for operations in that country.

With regard to electrical appliances sold, IKEA says it has improved their efficiency by 32% on average, compared with those it carried in 2008.

Over the coming years, IKEA says will switch its entire lighting range to LED. The company sells 79.5 million light bulbs annually and says if all its customers around the world replaced just one conventional incandescent light bulb with an LED version, that would save enough energy to power a city of one million people.

While Australian phased out conventional incandescent light globes some time ago, many other countries have yet to implement bans. Just in Australia, the switch will have saved around 30 terawatt hours of electricity and avoided the generation of 28 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.

As of August 31, 2012, the IKEA Group had operations in 44 countries and a total of 298 stores in 26 countries.139,000 people are employed by the company.